Some Oregon Residents Upset at Prospect of Pumping Their Own GasBuzz 60

Doug Baldwin playcallingBy Michael-Shawn Dugar, SeattlePI

Van Crashes Into Pedestrians Injuring SixAssociated Press

US military to accept transgender recruits after Trump drops appealEuronews

Snow on Christmas Eve, 2017Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Ice carving at WinterfestSeattle Post-Intelligencer

Amtrak derails near OlympiaGrant Hindsley / SeattlePI

Golden retriever meets Darth Vader and EwokSeattle Post-Intelligencer

They will have a fusion coating, ranging from brownish black to greenish black. The small fragments "will look like black olives," he said.

The meteor -- it becomes a meteorite if it strikes the ground -- entered the atmosphere weighing 1 or 2 tons, moving south and dropping at a 62-degree angle, based on reports of more than 70 who saw or heard it, Pugh said.

Some recorded images of its five-second appearance.

Images also were caught by two cameras in Canada's meteorite surveillance system and by others in Portland and Boise, Idaho.

Its greatest performance was over Helix, north of Pendleton, Ore., where its light was blinding and its sonic booms deafening, he said.

"It blew people out of bed in Helix," Pugh said.

It generated three sonic booms, one reason why Pugh and other scientists say they don't think it burned up completely while entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Pugh said that means it likely was a stony meteorite, by far the most common kind. Iron meteorites do not break up in the Earth's atmosphere.

He said some people reported smelling sulfur. A Meacham resident reported a metallic taste in the mouth after the meteorite flew by.

Pugh said two people have been scouring the Elgin-Tollgate area, flying over it looking for the black dust that would have been created by the explosion, and for holes in the snow.

The searchers also have spent hours on snowmobiles.

More casual searchers, he said, can check not only roofs but take a golf club, attach magnets to it, and move it over rocks.

Anything that sticks to the club could be a meteorite fragment.

The interiors of meteorites are frigid since they just came from space, where the temperature is 200 degrees below zero. Some meteorites found seconds after landing have frost on them, Pugh said.